Is there a large deposit of oil under the Rocky Mountains of Colorado?
By Mike on November 23, 2009, 12:50 pmI got an e-mail saying there is an enormous deposit of shale oil under the Rocky Mountains of Colorado Utah and Wyoming. The Green River Formation with 2 trillion barrels.
Does anyone know if this is true.
The oil is there, but the cost to extract it does not make it economically viable at this point. There is the environmental concerns as well since it would essentially require massive open pit mines.
There any many tales of companies going broke trying to tap into these deposits.
I have heard this also. It could be true because it is difficult to get the oil out of the shale.
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There could be 1.8 Trillion barrels. Very hard to get to, though.
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http://ostseis.anl.gov/guide/oilshale/index.cfm
no
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The oil is there, but the cost to extract it does not make it economically viable at this point. There is the environmental concerns as well since it would essentially require massive open pit mines.
There any many tales of companies going broke trying to tap into these deposits.
References :
http://energy.cr.usgs.gov/other/oil_shale/green_river.html
Spicifically, the ‘green river’ shale comes from the "Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming".
My source says that the "high grade" shale areas in the Green River Formation have "an oil equivalence of about 100 trillion liters".
This is .839 trillion barrels and this is only the most concentrated regions. The area of lower grade shale is about twice greater than the area of high grade shale so It is entirely plausable that there are in total over 2 trillion barrels!!
It sounds like this is true
Some more info:
"The shared property of all oil shales is ‘kerogen,’ a high molar-mass organic material…The organic material in oil shale also contains bitumen, typically around 10% for Green River oil shale, which is a highly viscous crude hydrocarbon that is the principal organic component of tar sands. However the mojor part of the oil is derived from the pyrolosis of karogen…The largest concentrations of kerogen are found in sedimentary non-resivoir rocks such as "marlstone" a mix of carbonates, silicates, and clays…By definition oil shale yields a minimum of 42 liters of oil per shale (written 42 L/t) and up to 420 L/t…these are values are conversions of British units of 10 US gallons per ton and 100 US gallons per ton, respectively."
Source "Synthetic Fuels" by Probstein, Hicks © 1982, so from what I can tell this is relatively old news.
The process to extract the oil from the rocks involves slowly heating heating crushed and dried shale at certain specifications. There are also specific shale mining techniques that I head Shell was experimenting with in the Green River Basin which involved "freezing" a boundary and subsequently heating the inner shale and exploding it to facilitate the mining.
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I really have no idea…but i know canada has a big supply of shale oil and rocky’s extend up there. We also now have an efficient way of extracting oil from shale. (i’m a chem e and its a possible career path…fuel….had a bunch of industry people talk to us…known about this stuff…..etc)
Canadian rockies are much diff than american rockies though…(from discovery channel…am an addict)
If its an investments and its affordable…i’d personally go for it.
If its a long shot investment…screw it….wait till it develops…make less of a return but be certain about it.
I’m a math minor too…and learned in a probability course…if its not atleast a 50/50…don’t do it. If its a 50/50 or better….go for it every time…..odds are almost never again gonna be in your favor
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